


a joy you can't keep in

by tosca1390



Category: Slains Series - Susanna Kearsley
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-04-14
Packaged: 2018-01-19 08:06:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1461955
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tosca1390/pseuds/tosca1390
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There are new scars she would know the stories of, new marks to place her lips upon. She does not want to leave him here, alone and friendless and ill. Kirkcudbright be damned, she wants to stay holed up here with him forever and give him vows of constancy and love.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	a joy you can't keep in

**Author's Note:**

  * For [theepiccek](https://archiveofourown.org/users/theepiccek/gifts), [magisterequitum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magisterequitum/gifts), [empressearwig](https://archiveofourown.org/users/empressearwig/gifts).



> Picks up directly from _The Winter Sea_. No _The Firebird_ spoilers. 
> 
> For Cait, Jess, and Jordan. 
> 
> #emotionallycompromised

*

Colonel Graeme’s knock on the door is heavy, yet polite. It hardly shatters the delicate reunion made between them, in the grey afternoon sunlight of another quiet Sunday. It could be any Sunday from the months Sophia has been here, but it is not. 

It is more. 

John’s calloused hands dress her with care, almost trembling on the laces of her gown over her shift. 

“I never had the chance to dress ye, in the mornings,” he murmurs, his body warm at her back. 

“You will have all the opportunities now,” Sophia says, her throat tight. Her fingers tremble as she fixes her mussed bright hair into a semblance of its normal upswept style. It is a cool, breezy day; she will not be looked at askance for her hair coming out of its pins at places. 

When subterfuge became so natural to her, she cannot conceive. But she is a stronger woman for it. 

His fingers settle on the bare skin of her throat, his breath warm at her ear. There are new scars she would know the stories of, new marks to place her lips upon. She does not want to leave him here, alone and friendless and ill. Kirkcudbright be damned, she wants to stay holed up here with him forever and give him vows of constancy and love. 

He kisses the nape of her neck. “Soon enough. But now ye must go.”

Tears burn behind her eyes. “Leaving you here feels terribly wrong, John,” she says as she turns to face him. She can all but feel Colonel Graeme at the door, his step heavy with impatience as he paces the corridor. “You have been alone for so long.”

 _And so have I_ , she thinks, aching at the loss of him, of the little girl who holds his eyes and face in hers. It is all there again, the loss and the grief, as if she had never borne it once before. 

His smile is just as she remembers, quicksilver and all hers. The possessiveness in her blood heats her cheeks. “Ye were always with me, lass.” His fingers catch on the chain about her neck; to follow the path is to find his father’s ring, safe in the hollow between her breasts, where it has lain these long three years. “And I with you.”

“To have you and to walk away, though – I – “

He leans down and kisses her, and she can’t help the tears that leak from the corners of her eyes. “I love ye,” he says into her mouth, voice steady and low, inexorable as the tide. 

She touches the strong cords of his throat, the hard line of his jaw. She wants to sink into his warm chest and burrow down, until they are but one person. For all her independence and her spirit, of which she held fast to so deeply, it is he who augments that strength. She is a stronger, better woman because of him, and she cannot bear to leave him behind as he once left her. 

“You said once,” she begins, touching his firm mouth with the tips of her fingers, “that you knew from the first moment.”

He nods, those grey-silver eyes sharp and focused on her. 

Smiling slightly, she cups his face between her hands and rises up. “I knew too,” she says against his lips. “I did not understand. But I knew.”

“Christ,” he mutters, his arms about her waist as he drags her flush to him. “If ye keep on saying things like that, I’ll not be able to let ye leave – “

His mouth takes hers, hot and wet and fierce. She shuts her eyes against the second, more pointed knock from outside. The afternoon grows dim, and she must leave. 

“You will come soon, yes?” she asks softly, wearing the bruise of his mouth on hers. 

John takes her hands in his and brings her knuckles to his mouth, kissing them lingeringly. “Aye. Quite soon.”

She will not say goodbye again. Instead, she touches his cheek once more, and makes for the door. His hands on her waist leave heat that she will treasure until their next meeting. 

Colonel Graeme, upon her exit, glances her over. 

“We’ll have had quite the walk, then,” he remarks cheekily. 

Sophia flushes but takes his proffered elbow and walks out of the house into the grey afternoon light. Heat bores into her back; he watches her, reaches for her from the window. She cannot look back, or she will turn around and never leave again. 

“How will you contrive our meeting?” she asks lightly as they walk slowly to the Kerr’s home. 

Graeme shrugs, every inch the soldier. “It won’t be a thing at all. I’ve contrived harder plans.”

“And how long must we wait until we can marry once again?” she asks, her voice curling in at the edges. To take John for her own, even under a different name, in public, unashamed – it is a dreadful ache, to mark him and be marked in turn. Her body remembers his, even from those brief days and nights together; just the thought of him sends her muscles to liquid, flushes her cheeks. Those calloused hands, the warmth of his mouth, the brush of his hair against her breasts – 

“I’d say at least a month, lass,” Graeme says, his mouth twisted in something like amusement. “A proper courtship.”

“Indeed,” she murmurs, lightheaded and flushed. “How long will you stay?”

“I will see ye both to Ulster,” he says, voice low. “I will be here, lass. Ye can’t get rid of me too quickly.”

He grins then, his eyes bright. “Besides, ye need a chaperone, don’t ye?”

*

Sophia Paterson meets David McClelland in the town square, outside of the kirk, on her uncle’s arm. 

“Lass, this is the man I was telling ye of. A brother-in-arms,” Colonel Graeme says, voice easy. 

Wetting her lips, Sophia settles her face into easy lines. “Is that so?”

“David McClelland, mistress. At your service,” John says, his voice softening into something closer to a Western accent. 

“Welcome home, sir,” she says in a remarkably even tone, her gloved hand outstretched to his. 

When he brings her hand to his lips in a bow, she bites the inside of her lip on a smile. 

“Will ye walk with us, McClelland?” Graeme asks. “I was just escorting the lady home.”

“It would be a pleasure. You are at the Kerrs, are you not?” John asks in that softened voice, as he falls into step on her right as Graeme takes her left arm. They walk through the town square, up towards the Kerr’s home, with little notice from those about their business. 

“I am,” Sophia says with a polite nod. Her blood is hot under her skin. All she wants to do is shift into John’s arms and press her lips to his throat, dig her fingers into his back and settle into the solidity of his corporeal form. He is _here_ and he is hers, and she will not let any take him, even the devil himself. 

“I recall little of them. My memory is not the best, since the battle. Do ye like them?” he asks politely. The town center recedes behind them. 

“They are quite kind,” she says, itching to place her skin on his. She feels a wanton, undisciplined; Colonel Graeme is at her left, for god’s sake. 

“Well, aren’t ye two just a pair of like souls,” Graeme murmurs. 

Sophia glances at him with a frown. “Uncle – “

“McClelland, can ye see the lass home the rest of the way? I’ve forgotten a piece of business I have with the milliner,” Graeme says as they turn the bend up towards the Kerr’s house. 

John merely nods. Graeme squeezes Sophia’s hand gently. “It’ll be but a half-hour, and then I should be back at this turn,” he says, fixing dark eyes on the two of them before he drops her arm and turns back towards town center, whistling lightly. 

They are alone, now, surrounded by trees and the grey light of the afternoon. The Kerrs expect her back with her uncle in an hour, but here, they have time. 

She looks at John, at those grey ocean eyes she loves so dearly. He smiles slightly, and takes her hand. 

“Will ye walk in the trees with me a moment?” he asks, his voice slipping into that low rough sound she knows so well, that she heard for so long in the beat of her heart and the laugh of her daughter. 

Her fingers slip and twine into his. “Yes,” she whispers. 

They slip away from the main road and into the glen, trees grown thickly together, shielding them from view. It is ten minutes they walk, silent, their hands clasped together, before he stops and nestles her against a mossy tree trunk. His brow falls to rest against hers, his empty hand on her waist. 

“I cannae be so near ye and not touch,” he says, voice husky against her skin. The sensation crawls over her. She inhales deeply and tips her head back, their mouths utterly close. 

“I want you to,” she whispers, the longing in her fierce enough to bring down the forests around them. Her pulse thunders in her ears. It had been five days since she’s seen him, touched him, felt the pressure of his mouth on her skin – five days too long for one starved. “John – “

He kisses her then, amid trees and brush and dirt under their heels. Her gown, a simple homespun for errands, is thin enough so that she can feel the heat of his skin as his hand grips her waist and slides over the length of her ribs to her breast. She inhales against his mouth, dropping his hand to slide her fingers into the unraveled queue of his dark hair, thick and smooth against her skin. His thigh presses between hers and she pulls him flush to her, the weight of him heavy and sweet. 

Hand curved to her breast, he shudders against her and presses her tightly between the tree and his chest, his mouth dragging along the line of her jaw. She whimpers, her skin tight and hot with frustration and need. 

“I don’t want to be fast with ye, Sophia,” he breathes to the thin skin of her neck, his thumb circling her peaked nipple through her gown. His voice is low and wrecked, and he burrows his face into her throat as if he cannot bear to be parted from you. 

“We can’t,” she murmurs, stroking her hands up and down his back, his shoulders taut through the fabric of his coat. “John – “

He licks at her thrumming pulse and she shudders under him, her fingers digging into his taut muscle. She looks up into the green-grey canopy of trees above, holding him entirely too close. 

“This courtship needs be perfect,” he mutters, sliding his hands away from her body to rest against the tree trunk. He levers himself off of her, jaw taut and mouth curled. “And fast.”

“Near a month, to be convincing, your uncle said,” she says, touching his cheekbones, the lines at the corners of his eyes. It’s true what he said before; they cannot be near each other and not touch. 

A sound rips out of his throat, frustrated and low. “Christ,” he mutters, and then pushes himself away from her. 

She watches him pace a ways away from her, willing the flush to recede from her cheeks. Her mouth feels bruised and used in the best way; she sees the answer swell of his mouth from her own lips. Touching her hair, she shifts away from the tree trunk and steps towards him. 

“We lived parted for three years, with just memories and favors to sustain us,” she says softly, her fingers brushing the chain about her neck. His ring lingers, a cool reminder between her breasts. 

His own hand flies to his throat, the leather lace there. Her stone lays under his shirt, and it gives her comfort. 

“Aye,” he says at last, stormy eyes flickering to hers. “To have ye so close, and still unable to touch ye and hold ye and speak to ye as I’d like – t’will be difficult.”

“We have borne worse,” she says steadily. It is entirely too true. 

He watches her silently for a moment, until it is just the sounds of the forest and the road down the hill to keep her thoughts company. “Aye,” he says, voice thin. “Sophia, ye’ve borne too much – “

She goes to him and presses her face to his shoulder, wraps her arms around his waist until she is a part of him once more. His arms come about her and his head drops until she can feel the press of his cheek to her hair. “I love you,” she says softly, kissing the skin above his heart through his shirt. “You are worth everything.”

His lips touch her temple, her brow. “No, lass,” he breathes, a familiar tone from the beaches at Slains, the gardens, under the lilac tree. “Ye are worth more than life itself.”

They remain entwined, ankle-deep in grass and ferns and dirt, the trees a yawning cover to the grey skies. She breathes him in, touches bare skin at his hip as his shirt falls loose. 

“Ye’ve got to meet Uncle,” John murmurs, his lips at her cheek. 

She tips her head back and kisses him softly, keeping her eyes open. She wants to remember him for her dreams, just as she attempted to do so in their brief nights together at Slains. He will be closer now, and he will be hers in all eyes soon – but she still wants to remember him when she curls up in her cold empty bed. 

He strokes her hair, gaze warm. “Ye are a miracle,” he murmurs. 

“If I believed, I would say you were,” she says softly. 

“Aye, but you believe in me. And in yourself. Isn’t that enough?” he asks. 

With that, he takes her hand in his and leads them back to the main road. Colonel Graeme waits for them, grinning like a schoolboy. She cannot help her blush. 

David McClelland bids her goodbye, and a request to call upon her at the Kerr’s home in the next few days, which she accepts with alacrity. He walks back towards town, towards the McClelland house, his limp uneven yet nothing to shy from. Sophia watches him for a moment before she takes Colonel Graeme’s arm and walks back to the Kerr’s home and their silence mediations. 

If, in the night, she wraps her arms around herself and thinks of John, she says nothing of it. 

*

“I heard you met the McClelland brother,” Mr. Kerr says to Sophia at breakfast the next morning. 

Sophia does not pause in the breaking of her roll, though her heart skips a beat. She feels the gazes of both Old Mrs. Kerr and Young Mrs. Kerr on her, and pauses just a moment, as if she is recalling the meeting. Morning sunlight streams in through the filmy windows. 

“I suppose I did. When walking with my uncle, in the town square,” she says lightly. 

Young Mrs. Kerr brightens, her eyes gleaming. “What was the man like?”

“Quiet. A man who has been through quite enough,” Sophia says, her tone cool. 

Old Mrs. Kerr makes a low sound of disbelief in her throat. “Quiet?”

“When not harassed by neighbors in his convalescent,” Sophia says pointedly, bringing her tea to her lips. 

“He’ll be coming to supper tonight, after kirk,” Mr. Kerr says, and Sophia’s heart thumps hard against her ribs. “As will your uncle, Mistress Paterson.”

“It is kind of you to invite them both,” Sophia says, casting her eyes down. She hopes her excitement is not noticeable, as Old Mrs. Kerr begins to grumble over ungrateful young men and papists. 

Supper is a stilted, quiet affair. Colonel Graeme sits to her right, and John across from her. He is admirably better at subterfuge than she is, for she cannot keep her gaze from him for too long. He pays her enough notice for Young Mrs. Kerr to take her by the elbow in the corridor between the kitchen and the parlor, and keep her to her side for a moment. 

“I reckon Mr. McClelland might fancy ye, Mistress Paterson,” she says, cheeks flushed. 

“It would be an honor for a man such as him to do so,” Sophia says, voice low and even. “Though, I do not know if I would speculate as such.”

“A queer man,” Mrs. Kerr says softly, “and opinionated.”

“War does odd things to those involved,” Sophia says tightly. Pushing aside the urge to defend John to the skies and the old Mrs. Kerrs and Robinsons of the world is a hard edge to balance upon. She does not think she is effective, but young Mrs. Kerr sighs and moves away, allowing Sophia to pass. 

She sees Colonel Graeme and John to the door. Mr. Kerr lingers in the front parlor, apparently reading; though keeping an eye out for his talkative mother about their lodger’s behavior is more likely. 

“May I call on you tomorrow, Mistress Paterson?” John asks, his eyes very dark. 

_Mrs. Moray_. She yearns to hear her true title on his lips, for once. “I expect my uncle to call,” she says lightly. “If you would like to come, with his consent, I would be glad to expect you.”

The corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement, Colonel Graeme chuckles. “I am utterly at your service, lass.” He pats the pockets of his coat, mouth turning. “I seem to have misplaced my pipe in the front room. If ye’ll excuse me,” he murmurs, wandering down the hall back to the parlor. She can hear his soothing low voice in conversation with Mr. Kerr’s after just a moment. 

John slips his hand into hers. “Walk me outside, lass.”

She does. She would follow him anywhere; she knows this now. 

The evening is brisk and damp, the scent of pine and rain heavy in the air. It is nights such as these that she misses the sea, the wide open skies and sand under her fingers and toes. Their beach at Slains remains; she wonders, in a heartbreaking moment, if Anna plays there and remembers. 

John takes her from the lamplight and into the shadows, steps from the house. Everything narrows into the quiet beauty of his limping step, his warm hand encircling hers, the heat of his body so close. 

“They are quiet,” he says after a moment. 

“They are nice,” she murmurs, rubbing her thumb across his knuckles. She wants to place her mark on him so desperately. 

“Ye are desperately bored,” he says with a wry smile. 

She looks up into his shadowed face, her heart full to bursting. “With you just moments away, how could I not be?”

His smile lights up the grey of his eyes, deep and lovely. Her time at Slains, watching him as he slept, imprinted the lines and angles of his face onto her mind’s eye; she knows his smile even in the shadows, even in the Western shires she never thought they would both see together. Large callused fingers link tight around hers and he pulls her close into the cradle of his chest. She tips her head up as his face bends to hers. This kiss is quiet, something sad and yearning; to have him and to say goodbye day after day – she swallows down her grief and shuts her eyes, breathing in the scent of him. 

“Sophia –“ he murmurs softly, his hand heavy on the curve of her back. 

She kisses him one last time before she slips from his arms and moves back to the house. John will wait for his uncle, wait in the dark, alone. She shivers, wrapping her arms around herself as she steps back into the house. 

“Aye, just where I left ye,” Colonel Graeme says as he comes out of the parlor. He glances her over, a little grin crinkling the corners of his mouth. “Is Mr. McClelland waiting outside?”

“Yes, Uncle,” she says, turning her cheek for his goodbye kiss as he comes to the door. 

“Ye should contrive to have the house empty tomorrow,” he says below his breath. 

“Tuesdays, they visit with Young Mrs. Kerr’s widowed mother in the country, and the servants attend to errands in town. Come past one, and I will be at liberty for two hours or so,” she murmurs in return. 

Colonel Graeme touches her cheek with a smile and passes through the front door. Sophia shuts it behind him, listens to him greet John in the darkness. She leans against the door and breathes for a silent moment, the sound of their retreating footsteps echoing in her ears. The phantom heat of John’s mouth and hands on her skin lingers into the night. 

“McClelland is right fond of you, Mistress Paterson,” Mr. Kerr says as she passes by the front room. “A good man, despite my mother’s opinions.”

“If he is,” she says evenly in reply, “it would be a compliment.”

*

The two hours she is alone, they use wisely. 

With Colonel Graeme standing guard downstairs with a few drams of whiskey and Mr. Kerr’s selection of hymnals for his leisure (but not to his amusement), John and Sophia tuck into her small bedchamber. No sooner than the door is shut than he has her pushed against the wood, his mouth on hers and his hands at the laces of her dress. 

“Ye are so beautiful,” he says reverently to the thin skin of her jaw. She peels his coat back from his shoulder and listens with satisfaction as it drops to the floor. With every inch of skin revealed, she takes a moment to look, to fill in the holes of her memory with his image. They spent so much of their time in darkness, in the shadows of Slains at night, that she knows the feel of his body under her fingertips but not by sight. She wants the complete picture. She yearns for all of him. 

As they loosen his shirt from his breeches and pull it over his head, her gaze catches on the starburst-shaped scar under his sternum. Her fingers touch it, shiny and just shifting white with the passage of time. A musket ball, taken close to the lungs – she remembers the cool detachment of his tone when he told her of Malplaquet, of his hours of pain and waiting. 

Her eyes burn, though she promised to cry no longer for him, not when he is alive and here and hers once more. 

“Sophia,” he says softly, his hands curling into her unpinned hair. Bright waves twine against his sun-darkened and war-roughened fingers. 

“This is new,” is all she says, and bows her head to kiss the scar. His chest hitches, the texture of the hair there coarse and lovely against her mouth. His hands fist in her hair. “Oh, John,” she murmurs as she presses her lips to the scars she knows and the ones she does not. 

He trembles, skin heating under her caress. “I carry them with pride, for ye, lass.”

“I wish you did not have to,” she says, guiding him back to the plain, freshly-made bed. She is slow, careful of his leg, even as his hands skim over her gown and pluck at laces. Her sleeves slip over her shoulders and arms and she shrugs out of the dress and steps away from it. In her shift and stockings, she is a slight thing, but he looks at her as if she has made the world. 

He has seen her so rarely in the daylight, as well. 

She hopes he is not disappointed. There are marks on her belly from their daughter now far away, and she feels older than she is. 

He sits on the edge of her simple bed, only in breeches, his hair loose from its queue. She is unused to him with longer hair. His grey gaze crawls over her as she stands before him, his hands set on her waist. The heat of his skin bleeds through the linen shift, soaking into her muscle and bone. 

She touches the leather lace at his throat. “You – “ She stops, overcome. The first time last week, it had been a flurry of touches and tears and words, barely finding the bed in his tiny room before he had sunk inside of her, her shift at her waist and his breeches at his ankles. Now, the house is still and they have a little bit of time. 

“You are so handsome,” she says softly, touching the hard line of his throat, his collarbones. 

His hands tighten on her waist and pull her astride his lap, her knees sinking into the thin mattress. She cups his face in her hands and presses her mouth to his jaw, his cheeks, the lines at the corners of his eyes. 

“You’re mine,” she breathes, as his hands bunch and clutch at her shift and pull it up over her waist. Cool air slips over her exposed legs and thighs, her stockings her only defense. “You have always been mine.”

A smile curls his mouth. He pulls the shift over her head and drops it to the floor, leaving her nearly exposed to his gaze. There is a hunger in his face that would scare her, if it were anyone else but him. But he loves her, and his ring lays hanging between her breasts, and she will be his in all manners and forms soon enough. 

“Ye are stealing my words,” he says wryly, shifting them back to the bed. He turns her onto her back and stretches out next to her, his eyes traveling her body as if he is a starving man. Fingers stretch over her soft belly, over her breasts, exploring her with care similar to their wedding night. She flushes under the attention but lifts her hands to his chest, his shoulders, his back. 

He feels small under her hands, diminished. Her heart aches dreadfully under the memory of his trials. “You stole my heart. I reckon we’re even,” she says quietly. 

Shaking his head, he lowers his mouth to the small rise of her breast, his mouth drawing paths over the curves, the peaked rise of her nipple. She shudders and digs her fingers hard into the taut expanse of his back, arousal a low thrum in her veins. Her thighs rub together as his hands flatten over her belly and lower still, to damp blonde curls between her legs. 

“I will spend my entire life working to deserve ye,” he says, voice gravelly and thick. Grey afternoon light slips through the cracks of her drawn drapes, soaking into his dark hair. 

“John, please – “ she whispers, drawing her hands over his back, the waist of his breeches. 

His fingers slip between the slick folds of her sex and she shudders, swallowing a moan. Her hips cant to his touch as his mouth shifts to her neglected breast. His hair falls against her skin and she shakes under his touch, sweat-damp at her temples and the curve of her knees. His fingers tease and play, circle her clit until she is wet and aching, clutching at his shoulders, his hair. 

“I love ye,” he breathes, his accent thick and warm. He kisses down her belly, finds each stretch and mark of the pregnancy he never saw, leaves her skin marked and wet from his mouth. Her thighs spread as he settles between them and she looks down in defiance of her sensibilities, horribly flushed and curious. 

“John – “

“Shhh,” he murmurs, eyes stormy as the seas after a gale. He kisses and licks along the jut of her hipbone, his clever fingers working inside of her, cresting the pleasure as it runs a red blush all across her body. Her stockings stick to her calves with perspiration. 

“I dreamed of ye like this, just so,” he says hoarsely against her inner thigh, his gaze set on hers. “Flushed and beautiful, happy. I wanted to spend all day in bed with ye, after our wedding.”

“I wanted that too,” she whispers, her voice a low, animal sound in the stillness of the room. 

“Christ, I do love ye,” he says before his mouth settles between her thighs and she lets out a quick yelp of shock and pleasure. She presses her teeth to one fisted hand to silence herself as she twists her other hand into his hair. 

The sounds are intoxicating, the wet deep noise of his mouth against her flesh. His tongue explores her, draws her into every nook and corner of her body, inhaling her. She can’t help but press her hips into the touch, trembling and aching against her simple bedspread, in this quiet Presbyterian house that sees so little true life. She rubs her feet against the side of his back, feeling the rise of his ribs against her instep, and she quivers under his hungry mouth. When he covers her clit with his lips and teases, his tongue flickering out against the sensitive nub, she muffles a moan into her knuckles and comes with two fingers stroking her, wrung out and like clay under his soldier’s hands. 

He strokes her lightly, petting her in a sense as she retreats from that peak, that crest. His mouth glistens in the afternoon light and she shakes with it, the realization that it is her that marks him so. John stretches over her as he kicks off his breeches and shoes to the floor, his erection hard and familiar against her thigh. The body remembers what the mind wishes it could forget; she wants the press of him within her, for though it was merely a week ago that they last lay together, it has been too long altogether. 

“Is that a French trick?” she gasps out at last, her breathing slow to recover as he stretches over her. 

He smiles that knowing small grin of his, bringing her teeth-marked hand to his mouth, kissing the indentations with lips still wet from her pleasure. A frisson of want threads through her, an ache she thinks will never be wholly satisfied. She will always want him; she will always love him. 

“It is something I’ve thought on often, since meeting and knowing ye,” he murmurs, kissing her wrist, the naked line of her forearm. 

Smiling through her embarrassment, she drags her fingers along the scars on his ribs, his chest. She spreads her thighs in welcome, raising her knees, and John lets out a low hiss of a breath as his erection rubs against her wet sex. 

“John, please,” she moans, arching her hips as she digs her hands into his shoulders, those broad shoulders she would know anywhere. 

When he enters her, she does not shut her eyes. She watches his face just as he watches hers, the sensations spilling through her, the flush too rapid to control as it colors her skin. His cheeks are just as red, a blush suffusing his exposed flesh, and she wraps her arms around his shoulders and pulls him close to the cradle of her body, until she cannot separate their bodies. They are all sweat and skin and lips and fingers, finding each other’s soft spots and scars and pressure points as he moves within her and she rocks under him in turn. Still, their eyes do not shy from the other’s; she will never look away from him. 

Later, she dozes with him curled up to her breast. Her hands slip through his hair, feeling the coarse silk of its weight, the rise and ridge of his skull underneath. She would memorize him again, for the pleasure of it. 

He shifts and smooths his hand over her flat belly. “I hope we have another, sometime,” he says quietly against her breastbone. 

Sophia blinks, the acrid taste of grief fresh on her tongue. She thinks of Anna, little dark-haired Anna with eyes like her father’s and the smile of innocence and love. Anna, who is someone else’s child. 

“Not to – “ John stops, voice strained. She looks down at the top of his dark head, and waits. “Not to replace, ye ken. To – to add.”

Tears spill over her eyelashes. She turns her face to the rough pillow beneath her, to catch those errant tears. Her fingers flex and tighten in his hair. Her chest hitches underneath him and he raises his head. She can feel those heavy eyes on her. 

“Sophia, love – I didn’t – “

“I know,” she says, voice steady through the wet tears clogging her throat. “I know.”

He shifts up and enfolds her in his arms, holding her impossibly close, their bodies skin to skin. “Ye are the best woman I’ve ever ken,” he murmurs to her hair, her tears slipping over his skin. 

She wipes at her face rapidly, looking up at him. “I can’t – not right now,” she says haltingly. 

Face drawn and serious, he nods. “I ken.”

“Someday,” she says, voice aching. She presses her palm to his chest, to feel the smooth black stone between their skins. The beat of his heart is fast under her touch. 

“Aye. Someday. When we can bear it,” he murmurs, kissing her hair. 

She tips her head up for his mouth on hers, and they do not speak against but for moans and pleas for quite a while. 

It is a good, too fast, two hours. 

*

Two weeks later, David McClelland comes to the Kerr’s house with a posy in one hand, his dark cape swirled about his shoulders. 

He is an object for gossip in Kirkcudbright; a young man they barely recall from a past life, a soldier with a limp from a battle none can fathom, for a war that makes no sense. That he comes to call on the mysterious Mistress Paterson, a woman of cool beauty and a cool temper who does not frequent kirk as much as a lady of her age and mysterious origins should, is another point of gossip. It is courtship, the town is certain; he brings flowers and books, and she has given him stitched favors and handkerchiefs. Her mysterious uncle lingers in town for no true reason, and thus the town assumes he waits only for an engagement and a wedding. 

Sophia hears all of this, through the helpful tones of Young Mrs. Kerr, and the judgmental ones of Old Mrs. Kerr. She pays little mind. The ruse is holding, and the time is nearly come. Three weeks of courtship, of secret interludes in the glen or in his empty room in town, with Colonel Graeme a benevolent absent chaperon, and the town is convinced, if opinionated. 

She doesn’t care. 

She waits in the front parlor in her nicest dress, a gift from the Countess months ago, and listens as the maid shows him in. The door is open; it will remain so. 

John comes in, his limp noticeable today. The leg must ache with the dampness, she thinks, yearning to go to him and soothe him. She has no disgust or revulsion, as he once feared. She merely wants to live with him as she’s always wanted to. 

The maid leaves, eyes wide. The door remains open. 

John looks at her with those sea-grey eyes, and smiles. 

“Sophia,” he says, approaching her slowly. Her fingers tremble. He looks handsome in the sunlight, the clouds shifted away for a rare wholly bright day. 

“Mr. McClelland,” she murmurs. 

He hands her the posy. She smiles, unabashedly pleased, and sets it on the side table. 

“I’ve spoken to ye uncle,” he says after a moment, reaching out to take her hand in both of his. His palms are damp with nerves. “And if ye’ll have me, I ask ye to marry me.”

Tears prick behind her eyes, a surprise. She wets her lips and turns her hand in his, twining their fingers together. 

“Yes,” she says, her heart full and her blood flushing hot under her skin. “Yes, I will marry you.”

His face brightens and he brings her into his arms, kissing her until she cannot breathe. Her hands go to the lapels of his jacket and hold him to her, the length of her pressed to him. His mouth is an insistent thing to match her own, and she has no fear of discovery. They are betrothed, after all. 

“I love ye, lass,” John whispers to the soft of her cheek as they stand together, his head bowed to hers. She can hear the house stirring, the sound of footsteps on the gravel path to the house. “I will love ye until I am in the ground, and for all the lives after.”

“I love you,” she whispers, kissing him once more before the family descends.

Everything old is new again, she thinks, his lips gentle on hers. And stronger for it, too. 

*


End file.
